There are bits and bits and bytes and decimals and marketing; a bad combination if ever there was one.
Bits can mean one of two things. One definition of bits is as a transmission rate -- modem speeds. This is a measure of the number of pulses which are transmitted in a time unit, usually a second. Its also known as a bit rate. A modem running at 128 kilobits per second sends 128,000 data pulses passed a point in a second. The second use of bit has to do with what is in those data pulses. Each pulse consists of a bit -- the on/off or the 1 and 0 , the stuff of computers. A byte is 8 binary characters, or bits. It takes 8 bits, or 1 byte to render a character on a screen. That's why computers are 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, etc. It's also why they are hexadecimal (base 8) and why exponents of 2 are so important. People are decimal oriented -- just count your fingers. Where a computer counts in 2's, we count in 10's. If you take 2 to the 10th power you get 1024, close enough to a thousand to call it a kilobyte among friends. A convenient unit to count in. A thousand thousands and you've got a megabyte. A thousand mega and it's a giga. A thousand giga and its a tera, on up to a petra and beyond. That makes an 80gb hd 80 times 1024 a thousand thousand times. It's an odd number so we conveniently refer to it as 80 and marketing insists it is 80. It shows as 71gb because some of that capacity goes to overhead. In your case 4-5 gig for that lovely hidden partition instead of giving you a separate copy of the os, as has been pointed out. The rest of the "missing" bytes are used in setting up the hard drive to be useful. You have to give up space to things like the file allocation table (FAT) or the new technology file system (NTFS) table so your operating system can find things on the drive. Computers love to store things in tables and even table of tables so a table here and there and pretty soon you are talking noticeable space. Your capacity isn't diminished but you have to give up some of it in order to use the rest of it. If you can find a copy of it, I'd suggest you look at "The BIOS Companion" by Phil Croucher. It's a little dated, 1997, but it has a very readable explanation of computer basics. If you are still interested after that see if the Sybex, "Networking Complete" is still around. And if you are still interested after that why then Tannebaum and Woohall's "Operating System: Design and Implementation ", which is still available is a must. You'll learn what disk interleaving and paging, among other things, are all about. It's not an easy read but it is so very informative. drew ____ � The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM � ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] or use the web interface http://e-newsletters.internet.com/discussionlists.html/ Send Your Posts To: [email protected] To change subscription settings, add a password or view the web interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/read/?forum=wdvltalk ________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________ You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with.
